Feminist Current

On June 13th, Bedford v. Canada was heard before the Supreme Court of Canada. The case is a legal challenge to Canada’s prostitution laws. Currently, in Canada, it isn’t technically illegal to buy sex, but many of the laws surrounding prostitution criminalize it: communicating for the purposes of prostitution, operating a bawdy house (brothel), or [...]

Rapper, Tyler, the Creator’s misogynist lyrics have been called “groundbreaking” and “edgy” by some.Defended on account of being “art” or “satire,” fans of the artist and Odd Future, the hip-hop collective he is a part of, are quick to fire back at those who criticize him. Talitha Stone, member of the feminist activist group, Collective [...]

Filmmakers, Teresa MacInnes and Kent Nason set out to explore the various models of prostitution law across the world and the impacts on women in the industry. They spoke with johns, sex workers, law enforcement officers, academics, experts, and government officials. Much of the film is focused on the Bedford v. Canada case, scheduled for [...]

Jackie Lynne, a Métis woman, a social worker, and an exited prostitute, who has been researching prostitution academically since 1998, speaks about her experiences of abuse, rape, and internalized racism and how those experiences led to her entry into prostitution. She links the continuum of male violence and colonialism to the current situation of prostitution [...]

Rad Fem 2013 is a radical feminist conference set to happen in London, on June 8th and 9th of this year at the London Irish Centre. When Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) caught wind of the conference, they staged a demonstration, pressing the London Irish Centre to cancel the booking. I spoke with Nic Nesbitt, one [...]

When Sunsara Taylor and her activist group, Stop Patriarchy, attended the annual CLPP (Civil Liberties and Public Policy) conference this past weekend at Hampshire College, they never thought it would result in their being escorted out by police. The 27th annual conference for student and community activists was focused on reproductive freedoms, called: “From Abortion Rights [...]

Prostitution is a gendered issue, but it’s also an issue that is very much tied to class and race. Canada’s history of colonialism is not something to be ignored when looking at both causes of and solutions to prostitution. In this episode, I speak with Cherry Smiley, co-founder of Indigenous Women Against the Sex Industry [...]

 Iceland has been called the world’s most feminist country. Ranking first in the 2012 Global Gender Gap Report, the country sucessfully banned strip clubs, adopted feminist legislation around prostitution, decriminalizing sex workers and criminalizing the men who buy sex, and have legislated against printing and distributing porn. Now, the progressive country is considering banning hardcore [...]

In this episode, I speak with Ravida Din, producer of a new documentary: “Status Quo: The unfinished business of feminism in Canada“. The film looks at both the history of the women’s movement in Canada as well as some of the key issues we are dealing with today: child care, the live-in caregiver program, the [...]

In 1963, “The Feminine Mystique“, a book often credited with sparking the second wave, was published. Betty Friedan interviewed housewives across America who found themselves unfulfilled in the roles that they were told would make them the most happy. “The problem that had no name,” as it turned out, was not an individual failure on [...]

On February 14th, 2013, women across the globe are invited to ‘rise up’ and dance, in order to address the global epidemic of violence against women. The event, organized by Eve Ensler, is called One Billion Rising. The website states: we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, [...]

Early in January, an already heated debate about transgenderism and feminism intensified due, in part, toan article written by Suzanne Moore called “Seeing Red: The Power of Female Anger.”  She remarked, in the article,  that women were meant to aspire to extremely unrealistic expectations in terms of what their bodies ‘should’ look like, saying: “We [...]

Internships have become the norm for many students as well as for those starting out in a new field. It’s more and more common that internships are mandatory in many post secondary programs, even though they often don’t provide students with course credit and/or are unpaid. These positions are presented as opportunities to learn, to [...]

Rolling Stone magazine recently came out with a list of the 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time, which included only three female-fronted tracks. With so many great female MCs out there, why are women so underrepresented in hip-hop and how can we change that? On this episode of Feminist Current, I talk to journalist [...]

Many have questioned the idea that committed, intimate, love relationships must necessarily be monogamous. Some see monogamy as a patriarchal invention that mainly benefits men and functions as a mechanism of control. In response to these questions and criticisms or, simply as an alternative that better suits their interests and desires, some people practice polygamy [...]

On December 1st 2012, Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter held their annual Montreal Massacre Memorial event at the Vancouver Public Library. This event remembers the 14 women who were murdered on December 6, 1989 in Montreal by a man, simply because they were women. The event also seeks to address the fact that violence [...]

Meghan Murphy speaks with neuroscience journalist, Maia Szalavitz, about some of the controversial claims made about female sexuality in Naomi Wolf’s new book, Vagina. In her article, ‘Naomi Wolf’s Vagina Aside, What Neuroscience Really Says About Female Desire‘, Szalavitz debunks many of Wolf’s conclusions around the science of female sexual pleasure, including the ways she [...]